Orders to some international destinations will require you to choose how you will manage additional customs and handling fees.
You will need to make a decision for each order whether you will pay customs and handling fees, or if the recipient of your items will.
You or the recipient of your items will not need to pay customs and handling fees if any of the following apply:
- You are sending personal correspondence and not goods
- You are shipping a gift with a value under £39 (45 euros) to EU
This guide explains how to set up your preferences, and how to make sure your orders have the right information to ensure they get to their destinations without issues or delays.
How to set a default choice on who pays the customs and handling fees
If you want to set a default choice for every applicable order, we will use this every time. To do this, go to your Settings page in Click & Drop and click the 'Customs' tile.
A dropdown menu will be visible in the 'Miscellaneous' section of that page.
The option you select in this menu will be used for all orders where this payment method is supported by the service and the destination country. For more information on country-specific rules and regulations, please visit the Royal Mail EU Trade Insights page.
You will still be able to change this setting for individual orders if you wish to do so. For example, if you specify a delivery term when importing an order via spreadsheet import and this is different from your default selection, the default value will be overridden by the value you have provided. For a more detailed guide on importing orders via spreadsheet import and C&D API, please visit the appropriate help page.
How to make the choice on who pays the customs and handling fees per order
If you have not set the default above, you will need to specify who will pay the fees when you are applying postage to your order. You will also need to do this if the selection you have made is not valid for the destination country or your selected service.
Personal accounts
On Step 4. Review/edit package contents, a section will be visible under 'Order information' that will calculate and display the estimated fees.
This step uses the customs information either that you have entered in the 'Package contents' section, or that has already been saved against the products in your order.
If you make a change to your order, either you change the postage service that is applied, or if you edit the package contents, the estimates fees may change or become invalid. You may need to click the blue 'Recalculate fees' button. Once all of the details provided are correct, the regulate fees button will become unavailable so it cannot be clicked again.
Page showing fees have been successfully calculated:
If you have provided insufficient information, or there has been a problem, you may see a warning that we have been unable to determine the estimated customs and handling fees.
If this happens, please check that you have supplied all required information in the 'Package contents' section. When you have, the 'Recalculate fees' button will become available to click again, and we can recalculate the fees based on any new information provided.
Page showing fees could not be calculated:
Viewing your fees before payment
When you have finished processing your orders, we will show a breakdown of any customs and handling fees on the Payment Confirmation page where you pay for your labels.
These will appear as two new lines, Customs Duty Fee and Customs Handling Fee.
If you have multiple items in the same payment, fees will be added.
Online Business Accounts
On Step 4. Review/edit package contents, a dropdown menu will be visible under 'Order information' where you can choose how the taxes, duties and fees should be paid.
Depending on which option you select, the fees may either be applied to your OBA account or be passed on to the recipient of your shipment. If you select an option that includes paying part of the fees vis IOSS, an IOSS number will need to be provided. You may also enter your estimated customs fee amount into the Customs duty cost field.